1. Field
The present disclosure generally relates to a barrel-shaped structure such as an aircraft fuselage, and deals more particularly with a splice joint used to join composite fuselage skin sections along a window belt.
2. Background
An aircraft fuselage may comprise one or more barrel assemblies having an outer composite skin attached to internal framework of circumferential, i.e. barrel-shaped, frames and longitudinal stringers. In one design approach, the barrel assembly has a one-piece outer composite skin that avoids the need for splices in the skin which could add weight to the aircraft. One-piece barrel assemblies require that numerous manufacturing build and assembly tasks be performed either serially or in a sequenced manner which may add to production flow time. Production flow times may be reduced by building multiple panel sections of the barrel assembly concurrently and then splicing them together to form a panelized fuselage. However, the use of a relatively large number of panel sections may increase assembly labor and/or material costs. Additionally, the splices required to join a large number of panel sections may substantially increase the weight of the aircraft.
Composite fuselage skins have ply pad-ups in window belts on the sides of the fuselage where windows are located. These skin pads-ups increase the gauge of the skin to reinforce the windows and/or provide a base for mounting window frames. The panel longitudinal splices are traditionally located in thinner areas of the skin, outside of the window belts.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method of fabricating a composite fuselage that improves production flow by allowing sections of the fuselage to be concurrently fabricated. There is also a need for a method of fabricating a composite fuselage that reduces the number of fuselage panels that are required to be spliced together by building a full barrel section using two half barrels. Further, there is a need for a composite fuselage and related fabrication method that reduce the number of splices, and associated weight of the skin.